347: Training Adaptability: The Key to Successfully Integrating Running into Your Life

Angie: 0:27

What's up, runners? Welcome to the show today. Before we jump in a little PSA, we have our next free class coming up on February 26th, where we're going to be talking all about how to run faster, how to run easier and get faster in the process, specifically tailored for half marathon training. Okay? So if you are thinking about running a half marathon this year and you want to learn how to run easier, And get faster and enjoy the process and decrease your risk of injury. Come join us on our free class next week, February 26th. Head over to realliferunners. com forward slash half marathon to sign up for that free class today. Don't miss it. And if you can't join us live, I really, really. We really encourage you to join us live because then I'll be able to answer all of your questions and give you the personalized attention that you're wanting. But if you can't join us live on that date, then make sure you register anyway if you're interested in that information and I will send you a recording when the class is over.

Kevin: 1:32

But you really, really want them to join or really, really, really? Three reallys.

Angie: 1:36

Okay. Really. Yes. All right. So today we're jump, we're talking about training plans. Okay. Which is perfect. With the class that we have coming up, we're going to be talking about how to train in a way that is personalized, that it's customized, that it's flexible and adaptable. These are some of the words that I've really been focusing on lately, lately when I've been thinking about what we do, what we help people with and what we need as runners because there's a lot of quote unquote personalized plans out there. We are faced with a world that has so many apps. AI generates plans now for you, there's plans in every corner of the internet and some of those plans claim to be personalized and they tell you that they are taking you into consideration and making a plan that is tailored specifically towards you and today we want to Take a look at that and see if those actually are personalized plans and are those plans serving you in the best way if you are someone that is using an app or something like that. Right, because they

Kevin: 2:42

certainly feel remarkably personalized, like you give it some information about yourself and it's like, Oh, here's, here's the plan for you. And you know. You could use these things and make up like a fake personality and answer their survey twice and see if you get the same plan and they're going to give you some variety to it like AI is able to generate a variety of things, but how much is it the plan that you really need? And what we're really diving into today is. What happens on those days when you're feeling like a little bit run down or something else comes up or your motivation starts to play any like kind of starts to fade off a little bit like do you just dig into the plan and be like well you know that bot created it for me I should probably stick with this thing or are you able to adjust and that's that's where making sure the plan actually works for you making sure the plan is adjustable I think becomes even more important than having the plan in the first place.

Angie: 3:32

Absolutely and that's really the secret sauce behind all of it because There is real life that falls, that comes into play and all of us know that our training rarely goes exactly as planned every now and then you might have that perfect week where you nail every single workout and you hit all your paces and all of the things, but when you look at training as a whole, how often have you ever hit every single workout exactly as it was written? I'm guessing. Probably not right. Like probably not 100 percent accurate with every single run, every single strength workout, every drill, all the things that you're supposed to quote unquote supposed to be doing. And so today we really want to talk about all of that and understand how can we make these plans work in a way and adapt to us to our lifestyle and still get the results that we want, right? Because there are ways that we can adjust a plan. And we've talked about adjusting plans before. Where if you take a plan and you adjust it too much, then you're no longer following the plan. That's,

Kevin: 4:37

that's a wonderful first point there, is if, if you take that plan, you tweak it, or if you take multiple plans, you try and shove them together, are you following any of them? Like, and the thing is that you're really trying to personalize it for you as best as you possibly can. Sometimes we need help in that, how do I make the thing fit into my life? Option because taking a plane, just being like, well, I like that aspect of it. I'm not really a fan of that part. So I'm just, I'm not going to do that. That, that part magically doesn't fit my schedule. And the part that tends to not fit your schedule is very often the part that we don't want to do the most, which is different for all

Angie: 5:14

of us, right? Because you and I enjoy different parts of training. Like if we were to rank what we enjoy most about our training, you and I would probably have a different order of items. Strength training is. First for me, right? Totally. But it's, I mean, especially when you're having a hard time running because of the other issues, but the, the thing that we want to help you understand is that you can't neglect any one part because then you're really not following the plan, but the plan does have to be flexible and adaptable enough so that when real life happens, it doesn't completely throw you off. And so let's actually just jump in right now. Okay. Because.

5:52

One of the things that we want you to understand, and if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you probably know that we believe that customizing a training plan to fit you and your lifestyle and your experience is the best way to stay healthy. Bye. Bye. Consistent and leads to the most successful results because you need a plan that works for you in your real life because so many times runners just choose a plan from an app or from a website or something like that, and they try to force that plan into their life. And that plan has them running six days a week and strength training, Reporting Four days a week, and it has them running 40 miles a week when in reality, they've been running 10 miles a week leading up to that training plan, and they've never done strength training before, and so they jump from essentially 0 to 60 and are trying to force themselves to just get into that plan, which doesn't work. That often leads to injury and inconsistency and lack of motivation because the plan is just not right for them. Or on the other hand, they're forcing their life into this plan, right? They're taking the plan and they say, okay, from now on, this plan is the be all end all, and I'm going to sacrifice everything else in my life so that I can make sure I get in this training.

Kevin: 7:06

Right. Which is usually a recipe for disaster. Like if, if you don't take your life into account and you're just like, well, this plan looks amazing. So I guess. I'm going to need to follow the plan to the letter and everything else. I guess I'll push onto the back burner. It's a dangerous way to go because you're going to get real frustrated with a plan. Like, and when that thing comes up where you're like, all right, but this is an important thing in my life. But the plan says I'm supposed to go for an hour long run. Which one do you choose? And I think that leads to a whole lot of frustration in it leads to guilt, whichever side you're going, because you're either guilty about going off in training. Or you're guilty about not following the plan and then you're not doing the training. So you're hitting guilt on either side because you, you have a plan that you're trying to either force everything into or you're trying to force the plan into your life. It doesn't work well.

Angie: 8:01

Right. And so when you can find a plan or create a plan. That fits your schedule and your lifestyle that's going to lead to the most consistency and consistency is the thing that is going to lead to the best results consistency is the thing that is going to lead to long term progress. It's going to lead to you being able to run faster run longer because. It's going to allow your body to adapt to the demands of training. You need to be consistent. When we are inconsistent, when we spend some weeks where we run five days, and then the next week we run two days, and then the next week we run three days, our body doesn't really know what to do. Our body does best, especially when we are training as an endurance runner. When we are consistent that means consistency with our runs that means consistency with our mileage That means consistency with our strength workouts And of course real life happens things come up But in general when you look at week upon week month upon month year upon year, you've got consistency in there So the question then becomes how do I get consistent?

Kevin: 9:08

And, and that's where you got to come up with a plan that makes the most sense for you. I think way back to when I was trying to convert Angie into someone who liked running from someone who, shall we say, did not like running. Yeah, let's go with that. Um, You did not think that it was going to be enjoyable to just go out and run easy for any amount of time. I did

Angie: 9:27

not. And yet, that's one of the things you love the most about running. Right. So you trying to convince me that that is actually an enjoyable feat was a pretty fruitless endeavor. Yeah,

Kevin: 9:37

no, that was just dumb. Like, I tried that for a little bit. I'm like, well, she doesn't like that at all. But I knew that in order to get to the point where you could like going out and just running for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it was, you had to get to the consistency. So however we got to consistency was going to be the win. And so I was like, all right, so let's do change of pace runs. Almost every single time you go out there, let's throw some strides in at the end of really short runs. Let's find some things that you think are fun. And I knew that if the ultimate goal was consistency, over that short period of time, it didn't really matter all that much what the workouts looked like. It just mattered that you were consistently heading out the door and getting in some sort of run. And so, that was my plan, because I knew that ultimately, the goal was consistency in some

Angie: 10:26

form. Yeah. And I think that that's genius of you to realize that. And that's really how we coach all of our athletes now is helping them figure out what is it about running that you enjoy? What is it that is fun for you? What is it that you like? And then building a plan around that, because ultimately, like Kevin said, consistency is The non negotiable thing here when it comes to progress, like you have to be consistent. So the question is, how can we get consistent? And one way that we can get consistent is having more fun, actually enjoying the thing that we're going out to do. And if you're not enjoying it, I, you know, I'd ask you to question why are you even doing it in the first place? Because there are lots of ways to get healthy. There are lots of ways to get in better shape. So finding something that's fun and enjoyable is definitely one path to getting consistent. There are others, you know, you can choose dedication and commitment and discipline and all of those things will lead to consistency. And I believe that we need all, we actually need all of those things if we are going to be consistent long term because there are definitely days that it's just not going to be fun. Right? So we can't just lean on fun. We have to have multiple tools and multiple feelings in our tool belt that we can lean on to get ourselves out the door to be consistent.

Kevin: 11:46

Yeah, no, you make a good point there. Like when I was starting to put together a plan for you to be like, yeah, this is how you can get into running. I didn't make every day like just nothing but fun. Like there had to be some days that you're like, I don't really want to do that. I'm like, I know, but you get to go back and do what you want to do next time. But you also kind of have to do this. It's going to make things better. Well, not

Angie: 12:06

that I had to. No. But that was the best suggestion. Yes. Right? And, and then you tapped into a different motivation for me. So, some of it was fun, and then sometimes, And you knew that I am also someone that likes to improve and see progress. So you tapped into that level of motivation to help me stay consistent with some of the things that maybe I didn't want to do as much. Right.

Kevin: 12:30

And then rewarded you with some things that you did want to do. Like, Yeah. Ultimately, the goal was still consistency because that's that's what wins over the longest term. The most consistent is going to win, right?

Angie: 12:41

So if you know yourself and you know that you like doing cross training and you like doing lifting or Biking or swimming or all these other different things and that you are not someone that wants to run six days a week It's better for you to find a plan or to create a plan where you're running Four days a week, or even three days a week, depending on what your goal is. Instead of finding some plan that's having you run five or six days and always missing those running days because you're replacing them with something else or because you just don't want to do it because then you're training yourself. To understand, like your brain is thinking, okay, well, the plan doesn't really matter because it's telling me that I need to do six days, but I really am only going to do four days. And then if you're only doing four days, which days are you missing? Are you missing your speed days, your long days, your easy days, whatever it is, the ratio is now thrown off because you guys know that we should have a very intentional training plan where some of our days are easy. Some of our days are harder. Some of our days are longer. Some of our days are shorter. Like there's a lot of different types of runs that we need to incorporate if we want to make progress. And it's not just about going out and running the same distance at the same pace every single day, because that's going to quickly lead you to a plateau. I mean, you

Kevin: 14:02

talk about adding in cross training and turning from six days of planned runs into four, but even without all the cross training, sometimes life is just really busy. And I think this. This point here varies from person to person. It might be better to plan for four days, knowing that you can get in four, rather than plan for six days, and then be like, but maybe I'll only get in four. Because if you're missing, if missing days stresses you out, you might not be getting the same benefit. Like two people that are both running four days a week. If one is planning for four and hitting it and the other is planning for six and getting in four, but stressing out about missing those days, they're literally messing with their hormones and not getting the same benefits of the four days. Like their hormones are all out of whack and they're missing out on the physical adaptations because they're worried about the workout they didn't get before or not going to be able to do on the next day or whatever it is. Stress is messing with your adaptations. I'm so

Angie: 15:00

glad that you pointed that out because people don't realize that that Is a real thing because a lot of times we only look at what it is. We're actually doing well I'm running four days a week But we don't think as much about how we're feeling in that process and stress plays a huge role in The adapt, the adaptation, the adaption, that's not a word, um, the adaptation that our body is able to or not able to undergo. Right. What's the stress

Kevin: 15:30

hormone? Cortisol. Thank you. Is one, one of them. But that's like one of the big ones that literally blocks muscle, uh, like protein synthesis. You can't build more muscles because you're all cortisol. So

Angie: 15:41

Your stress response plays a huge role in how your body adapts to your training. So like Kevin said, if you are someone that is just stressed all the time, whether it's from work, from family, or from missing your training, your, Adaptation is going to be different than someone who's feeling really good is doing the same runs as you like you could literally be on the same exact training plan doing the same runs hitting the same paces one person feels really good. about themselves and really great that they're being consistent and getting all these things in. The other person feels stressed about it. Those two people are going to end up with different adaptations.

Kevin: 16:22

Oh, 100 percent different adaptations. I think this is one of the often overlooked aspects of cooldowns. And I think one of the best aspects of having a team. For a cool down, cool downs are annoying. Like you've done your workout, you're exhausted. All you want to do is just lay on the ground and be done with your workout. And the plan says, all right, now go run for a mile for your cool down. Now go get in 10 minutes of your cool down. This is the best part about having a team because. Post workout you can now chat probably not about the workout about anything and you're able to move your mind Past the stress of the workout and your body goes back into like oh I I'm gonna go about and do the rest of the things in my day and I don't have to freak out about this workout If you go off on your cooldown solo, and you just are continuing to let the wheels spin about whether you hit the paces exactly right or miss them, you're already losing some of the benefits of the workout. The cooldown is a time to not just, like, bring your heart rate down, but also let your mind shift out of running mode, and shifting out of running mode then lets you gain the benefits of the hard workout itself.

Angie: 17:27

Right, so So understanding that adjusting the plan to fit your schedule is often one of the best paths to take that well, yes, that's true. We believe that and really that's one of the biggest things that we help people do inside the academy. And there's also route number two, where you can adjust your life to fit your training. Now, We would suggest if this is something that you want to do, because there are some times and some goals that this does need to actually happen. If your goal is really, really big and you have a really busy life, there's going to be times that in order to achieve the goal you want to achieve, that you are going to have to sacrifice other areas of your life. When done in short periods of time this can totally work if it's done in short periods of time, right? We this is the thing that we want you to think about is how long are you? Changing up and quote unquote sacrificing other areas of your life for your running. If you're doing it for one training cycle per year, okay. If you're doing it for a training cycle every couple of years, okay. Do you want to be doing that for every single training cycle all year round?

Kevin: 18:44

No. No, the answer is no, that is not going to go well for you. It's really also not going to go well for your support system and right after consistency support system might be real high up there in your best chance of success. And if you know, by setting priorities aside, if one of those priorities is like time with family and that's a good aspect of your support system and you keep putting them to second or third on your list because you got to get the running because the plan says so that's going to create some issues long term over short periods of time. Don't get me wrong. Like we just had the Olympic trials for the marathon a few weeks ago. Most to all of those people in the race had small periods of time where they sat down with their friends and family and said, look, I have got to focus on running for this chunk of time. Here's the big race afterwards. I'm going to pull back from running a little bit and be able to spend a whole lot more time with family. I, then I can spend more time at my job or whatever it is, but. You need to have an end to when you're going to have this time window of I'm going to be extra focused on running So that everybody around you can be aware of okay We're gonna be able to handle this because there is an end date to it It's

Angie: 19:56

just like running a speed interval like when you know that you have to run fast And if I just told you okay, I want you to go out and I want you to run as fast as you can The first question would probably be For how long, right? Like when we know that there is a given time frame or a limited amount of time that we have to sustain a given effort, it's easier to do because we can wrap our heads around that. And the same thing goes for our training. You know, like one of the things that I like to tell our team and myself, I use this one on myself all the time is you can do anything for a minute or you can do anything for two minutes or there's only two minutes left. Like I try to frame it so you In a way that that time period doesn't seem that big. So, it's the same thing here with our training plan or our training block. If you know that there's a goal that's really important that's going to make you need to sacrifice other areas of your life, knowing how long that change and those sacrifices are going to need to be in place is a really helpful thing for both you and the people around you.

Kevin: 21:02

Right. And then once you've done this, now you have officially set your priorities and then you can follow through on them without kind of having vague priorities and then feeling guilty about either training or not training. You've established clear priorities. You should communicate those priorities to the people around you. You should not try to just subtly start kind of training for a marathon until your wife catches on that your long run just keeps getting longer. It doesn't always work out the best. I mean, sometimes you do have a really loving support system, but sometimes they, they notice faster than you think they do. Right.

Angie: 21:37

But you also, when you did that, if you guys couldn't tell, Kevin did that, but when you did that. it also wasn't interfering with the rest of our life. That's true. So it wasn't like, oh, so all of a sudden Kevin is gone for six hours on Sunday and I don't know where he is. That's not what happened. Like you still, you got up early, you got your runs in, nothing else was really affected. And so it wasn't like this big thing that needed to Have this conversation or whatnot. It was just, you know, that's, that's another story for another time. I just thought it would

Kevin: 22:10

be a funny joke to slide in there.

Angie: 22:12

Right. But like the other thing that I like to think about when I, um, think about kind of rigid training plans and rigid. Uh, things like this is meal planning. And I think that meal planning is a great, um, metaphor here because if you've ever tried to meal plan, I don't know, you know, if you love meal planning or hate meal planning or have tried it or someone that like religiously subscribes to it. But I know for me with meal planning, if you are someone. That is trying to plan all seven days of meals. Like maybe you're trying to plan, okay, on Monday, we're having this on Tuesday, we're having this and you want to plan out all seven days. Things are inevitably, inevitably going to come up. I mean, at least that's been our experience. And so trying to meticulously plan out every single day's meals. It doesn't leave a lot of room for error or, you know, heaven forbid, you try to plan out all 21 meals, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner and for all week, every week, I know that for me, that would be way too overwhelming and would lead to a lot of inconsistency and then a lot of feeling of guilt and failure because. Life is going to happen and there's going to be a day that I don't feel like cooking or that I definitely don't feel like that meal that I've had planned for today. And so I take a much more flexible approach to meal planning, which is really going to help us lead into our next point here, which is adjustments are inevitable. Okay. Life is going to happen. Adjustments need to be. Quote unquote part of the plan, you know, like we have to understand that we are going to need to adjust and adapt along the way Because if we have a really rigid training plan that leads us to skipping workouts Whenever a conflict arises that's gonna lead to so much frustration that's gonna lead to you not achieving the the highest potential that you have and it's gonna Be a really stressful experience to

Kevin: 24:03

it's gonna be super stressful. I like that you say we have to literally plan for adjustments. Like if you imagine that everything is always going to work out perfectly, as soon as something doesn't, you're going to freak out over it because you didn't think it was going to come that you have to accept that the adjustments are going to need to be made. I think people get this wrong when they train like. Do mental visualization heading into a race. They're like, Oh, and then this is how I'm going to get to the starting line. And I'm just going to be able to walk up to the porta potties and slide right in. And then I'll get this spot with my foot on the starting line. No, you aren't. No, there's going to be a line of 40 people. There's not going to be toilet paper inside of it. And then they're going to start calling people over. There's going to be barriers trying to prevent you from getting into the starting area plan for some issues coming up and then hope that maybe it goes smoother than that.

Angie: 24:52

Right. And. I listened to a good podcast that talked about this. Um, it was like a decathlete that was talking about his training and he was talking about the work that he had done with his mental performance coach and his sports psychologist. And um, his sports psychologist told him to also visualize things not going well so that when. Things did come up because inevitably something would he's already practiced those things as well because like you said if you're only practicing Exactly how you want it to be and then something else comes up it throws you off your game But if you just expect that things are not going to go as planned or things are gonna go quote unquote wrong then You're going to be more prepared. And that's how I think we have to go into this. So back to my meal planning example, what I like to do now for meal planning is come up with an idea of five dinners for the week. And I go to the store and I buy everything that I need for those five dinners. Now, or maybe, maybe sometimes even four, but like essentially I get five proteins for the week. I know that we have. Rice and quinoa and things like that for the carb and the starch. I make sure that we have vegetables that we can put with it because we make pretty simple meals. Nothing too crazy around here, especially on the weekdays. We have a very busy schedule with our two girls. They're involved in a lot of things. And so I know, okay, I've got five dinners, but instead of saying, okay, a Monday, we're having. Meatloaf. I don't even know the last time I made meatloaf. I don't know, but it was delicious. I remember. Meatloaf is not even on the menu, but Tuesday is usually tacos. We'll go with that. Like, Tuesday is typically

Kevin: 26:31

taco night. Unless sometimes it slides into Mexican Monday.

Angie: 26:34

Right, because sometimes you just want to make tacos on Monday, right? But when we know that Okay, I've got food for tacos. I've got a pork tenderloin. I've got our black bean quesadillas that we're making one night. Then when you get to that day, you can say, what do I feel like today? And so it is a plan with also some flexibility that allows me to adapt to what's happening that day. Anything that came up that Was a little unexpected. I know that some of the meals take a little bit longer than others. And all of a sudden this meeting got thrown in and I didn't have the same amount of prep time that I had. So I'm going to have to pick one of the meals that has a shorter prep time. Okay, no problem. All of it's good because I have a flexible plan.

Kevin: 27:18

And sometimes you need to get a real extra flexible, like the same with a running plan. Sometimes you get sick and there is no, Oh, well maybe I'll just kind of adjust the workout. No, no, no. You're sick. It's a fever and you're in bed and you're not getting that run in. Sometimes life gets super crazy. There's like three meetings and the kids have to be at four different games simultaneously and play practice and whatnot. And you're like, okay, so we're going to get some takeout tonight. And that can work, as long as it's not an all the time thing, and, and this is where it goes to your decathlon, is you can't then freak out that you had to have takeout that night and be like, well, I mean, we had takeout on Tuesday, so I guess takeout for the rest of the week? Like, no, you're, you've got more things you can plan and get back into it. I know when I was coaching track, the long jumpers, like I saw this in hand, we didn't have any decathletes in high school, but the long jumpers, you get three jumps and the kid who would screw up jump number one, you could see someone would screw up number one and then they would just spiral mentally and be like, Oh man, my jumps are off today. And I had to work with these kids in practice and I would. Make sure that in practice they were purposely screwing up jumps. Like I'd have them try and jump off the wrong foot and then be like, okay, now give me your best jump that you can possibly can and have them come back from something that definitely went very, very wrong so that they could come back without being crushed and just be like, Oh, now I just go back into my rhythm. I have a plan. I have a rhythm and I can go back and I feel comfortable inside of this plan.

Angie: 28:49

I love that you made them practice messing up. That's, that is genius coaching right there. So going to your training plan, how do you adjust, right? Like when life happens, how can you adjust? And as much as we would love to give you a hard and fast rule to go by every single time, the answer is nuanced because it depends, right? Can your plan Take all of these variables into account going back to that online plan or that app that you downloaded to give you your personalized plan is that plan, taking your life, your lifestyle, all of these things that are happening at work or with your family. Does it take all of those things into account? You know, we just got news today that a member of our community suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. There's going to be things that we're going to have to do that. I. Never would have planned for, you know, over the next week or week or two. And does my plan allow me to adjust for that? You know, does the plan that you have allow you to adjust for that because it matters, right? There's, I'm not going to not be present for the people that need us because of my training plan. You know, I'm not going to not be at my kids. Rehearsal or last minute scrimmage game that they just threw on because I had a run planned. Sometimes you might need to, right? There are other times that you might want to say no to those things, depending on your priorities, like Kevin said before. But other times you're going to want your plan to adapt and to be flexible so that you can do the other things that are more of a priority in your life.

Kevin: 30:29

But, I mean, the thing is that there's so many variables to take into account. There's so many aspects that you could be like, well, how do I adjust the training plan? What depends? Like, do you have a, do you have a race coming up? Is the race three months from now or is the race three weeks from now? Is the race next weekend? Because The way that you adjust and all those scenarios is different. You know, are you a higher mileage runner? Low mileage runner? If you're only running three times a week and you miss one, can you put it onto a different day? Because that's different than if you're running six times a week and you miss one, you can't just push it to the next day. There's already a run on that day. There's so many variables. I mean, that's, that's just popping too. I can probably rattle off 50 different variables off the top of my head. And only some of them are going to matter in different cases. So you need, you know, you need to figure out what the best choice is moving forward and then have confidence in it that you're not second guessing it. And then going back to that, like guilt over, well, I missed that workout and it screwed up my entire rest of the week, which then fell into the next week. No, you had life come up. You made a choice that this is the adjustment. This is the best adjustment. Now let's continue moving forward.

Angie: 31:36

Yeah. And I think that that's really. Where expert guidance comes in because it's really hard to figure this out on your own sometimes, and I'm guessing that the little AI thing in your pocket that we all are so dependent on now is probably not going to be able to give you the best answer to that of, Okay, well, I miss this. What do I do now? Right? Like that's the benefit of having an expert, having a coach, having a support system there that you can run things by and help you figure this all out Yeah,

Kevin: 32:09

no, my watch continues to tell me that I need to go on an hour plus long run every single weekend. And I'm like, I'm not doing that because I'm, I'm currently walking right now and it gives me the pace that I'm supposed to run it at. I'm like, I can't hold that pace right now. So It doesn't understand all the variables that need to be taken into account. It, it's Your watch doesn't know you have a hernia right now? My watch is missing out on the injury and I don't, I don't know how to tell it that I have a hernia and to make it stop telling me that I should go off on like an hour plus long run. You're

Angie: 32:39

like, I would love to. Stop making me feel guilty. That's the other thing is that sometimes, right, that's that. Um, thing that we were talking about before when you miss things or when your plan is telling you that you should do something that you know you're not really capable of right now, that's going to lead to frustration and guilt and other feelings that

Kevin: 32:59

are not so fun. Yeah. I mean, I've, I. Personally, I know how to actually make it stop doing this. I kind of keep it on there of the recommendation for what I should do today, because it makes me laugh. Like there are other things that are going on that I'm getting very frustrated with my current health situation, but my watch workout suggestion of the day is just comical every single time to me. I just, it's just a little bit, bit of humor for my day. Um, so when, when we've got this, something came up and it depends, we're trying to dive into this gray area. There are, I think some fundamental questions that we should be asking ourselves in order to figure out what do we do moving forward? And just some few that, that I came up with is what was the workout that you missed? And why was it missed? I think that's like, that's the biggest thing that we need to start and that goes back to something that we talk about all the time on here is knowing the purpose of the runs, like one person missing a 45 minute run. And, and another, that could be the long run for one person, or just an easy recovery run for somebody else. Like, what was the purpose of that run, and why did you miss it? Did life come up? Or, are you sick? Because those are very, very different reasons to miss a run. Are you on vacation? Like, are you going to be able to recover from this thing? Or, did you simply have something come up when you had it built into your schedule of, Oh, I'm going to run at this time during the day. And that time disappeared. So now you didn't get that run in. I think that's where we should start.

Angie: 34:32

That's a very good place to start. The next place that you might want to go to ask yourself is what is the goal? Like, what am I training for right now? What is my current training cycle? And what is the current goal that I'm training for? And how did this workout connect to that? And this is again, going back to why it's so important to understand why you're doing what. You're doing and that's one of the things that a lot of these apps and online training plans don't explain to you because I am by nature a very curious person and I always ask why I always want to know why I'm doing what I'm doing because if it doesn't make sense to me, then why the heck am I doing it? So that's one of the things that we do. Love teaching our academy members. We don't just give them a plan. We help them understand the plan that's best for them and why they're doing certain things so that when things come up, they can make these types of decisions. They, of course, can ask us, but sometimes we're not Always available at the exact moment that they need to figure out how to adjust and adapt. So we teach them how to think about things differently so they can make these decisions for themselves. So what is the closest goal and how did this workout connect to that goal? What? And like, can we, can you give me a good example? Cause I'm having a hard time kind of thinking of one right off the top of my head of like, how did this workout connect to the goal that I'm working towards

Kevin: 35:54

right now? Okay. So say you have a half marathon coming up next month and this particular workout, maybe it was your long run. That that you were able unable to hit? Yeah. Well, you can see the direct connection of trying to increase your long run to be able to successfully cover that distance. Mm-Hmm. maybe you have the most things that come to my head here are like race things. Maybe you have a 5K in a few weeks and this was a very 5K race specific, like the, it was, I don't know, let's say quarter repeats at 5K pace with minimal recovery. So you're practicing 5K effort. You're really practicing that pacing. Yeah. This workout is kind of critical to that. As, or, you know. If the workout was a recovery run, then maybe missing it because if it wasn't an illness, that's an easier one to come back from because not running is going to also be a recovery

Angie: 36:43

day. Right, and that's a good thing. So you're, you, by knowing that this was a recovery run and you didn't get it in and you ended up not running at all, you still achieve the goal of recovery. Yes. With that thing. But if the goal or yeah, if the purpose of that workout was to practice 5k. race pace and 5K effort and help you learn how to adjust and adapt and all the things there and you miss that, that's different than missing a couple mile recovery run. Right.

Kevin: 37:11

And so that's thinking about like the closest goal, especially if the closest goal is a race. But then there's just the general, what's the purpose of this training block that I'm in? Like, is it race specific or is this something like I want to increase my mileage? Well, if you're trying to increase your mileage and you miss a run, you're not increasing your mileage. So that, that's a different way to try and figure out how do I adjust my plan moving forward? Then if you miss a run and the purpose of this overall training cycle is strength building. Well, okay. If you missed a run, don't try and squeeze your run in the next day along with your lifting routine because of the. Focus should be your lift

Angie: 37:50

that day, right? And if you try to double team yourself and get your endurance run in on the same day as your lifting day, you might be making your lifting less effective, right? So no, the

Kevin: 38:00

point of the

Angie: 38:00

training block, exactly. And the other thing you want to think about is, is your workout, like the workout that you missed, is that actually building to something next week or the week after, right? Like in some of our plans. When you're specifically half marathon training, marathon training, we have our athletes build up. So like say they start with a tempo run or a steady state run and one week they're doing a 20 minute steady state, right? And then maybe the week, the next week they're doing a 25 minute or a 30 minute, right? That steady state run is building up over the course of a couple of weeks. Another example would be a long run. You know, if you're missing your long run and you've got your long run progressing from week to week, it matters if you miss a certain distance, because then when you jump up to the next distance, the week later, the next amount of time. You don't have that same foundation. And so maybe that jump is too big of a jump for what you're currently capable of right now. And it is important to

Kevin: 38:59

adjust. Yeah. I mean, there's so many workouts. You give a couple of good examples there. Other things where you're trying to fill in like. Tempo effort, and you just kind of keep reducing the recovery from one week to the next, the next, or I'm a big fan of doing workouts every like couple of weeks or three weeks, do similar workouts where they might not even look identical, but they are definitely like the same tempo style of workout. And the recovery is shrinking or the workload is increasing. If you mix miss one. You might not be fully prepared for the next one, what are you supposed to do with it? So check and see how that workout might connect to future workouts or have been building on a previous workout. Um, and then I think the next one here is, what is your experience level with what you've missed? Like, if this is the kind of workout that you're doing all the time, it might not be the worst thing in the world that you've missed one, okay? Because you're so familiar with it and the body doesn't lose everything. Like, if you miss one workout, it's not like, oh, well, I can never do that workout again. Next time I do it, it's going to be starting from scratch. It won't be, okay? Um, That experience level with that type of workout really helps answer the question. Is this something that I should skip or is this something that I should try to maybe move to later in the week and get rid of something that I do have the greater experience with. So there's, there's a lot of different ways to ask this. Should I move it later in the week? Maybe if you've got all this experience with the long run, but maybe if The biggest thing that you're focusing on is the long run right now, because you've got a marathon in a couple of months, then you might just miss that workout. Even though you might have the experience with a long run, that's still critical to right now. They kind of play off of each other, all these different questions.

Angie: 40:40

And so again, this is why it's important for you to understand. The why behind it for you to be an educated runner, for you to understand and be able to critically think about what is happening here. You know, where does this fit in the big picture of all of it? And having a coach or an expert to guide you is so huge in that process. If that's something that you are interested in, head over to real life runners. Dot com forward slash Academy and get on our waitlist so that you can know when the doors are open because this is these are Literally questions that we field from our runners every single week That's why we can talk so specifically about this because on our weekly group coaching calls people come on and they say, okay Here's what happened. What do I do? How do I adjust this? So if you want to coach and a physical therapist right there whenever you need us Every week or, you know, to email us whenever something comes up, that's what we do inside the academy. And really, that kind of support and peace of mind is really invaluable. Yeah. Invaluable or valuable? Like that's the, it's one of those weird words that No, they mean the same

Kevin: 41:48

thing. I know, it's so strange, isn't it? It's like flammable and inflammable. They also mean the same thing. Why? Because the English language is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And in ridiculous also. And in

Angie: 42:00

ridiculous. Absolutely. Um, so any last thoughts that you have, uh, before we wrap up? Uh,

Kevin: 42:06

yeah, I have a brilliant metaphor that you've completely skipped over here. Oh, I can't wait to hear it. Oh, I know. Because it's about baking. All right. So. So. So. There are all these recipes. I remember when we got into like the super healthy cooking stuff, and we're like alright We're not making anything with white flour anymore But things taste different, and they just bake different when you don't have white flour So there's still some things that we're gonna make with white flour and normal sugar and stuff, but there's also All sorts of flowers that you can use and all sorts of sweeteners you can use. There's, you know, instead of, instead of adding like sugar to it, let's add applesauce to it. Well, it works as a sweetener, but it's all going to bake up a little bit different. And so when you're trying to make a dessert and you go to the pantry and you're like, Ooh, I don't have that ingredient. You have to ask the question, do I want dessert? Quickly or do I want the dessert to follow this exact recipe and that's like looking at your training plan like Looking at taking a step back and seeing the really big picture Do I want to make sure that I can just knock off the boxes as close to correct as possible? I can make some substitutions and be like, well, I don't have almond flour But I do have it all purpose like it's not gonna be quite the same. I've got I Mixing and matching certain things certain ingredients. It's not gonna be identical to what the recipe says but it's gonna be able to work or

Angie: 43:33

Or not because you can't just substitute almond flour for all purpose and that thing turn out the same

Kevin: 43:38

way No, it's not gonna turn out the same way. So you have to figure out. Okay, do I want to go to the store? sometimes You've got something that comes up in life and might totally throw your plan off track. You can try to shove the plan into your life. You can try and force it in, or you can make adjustments and look back and say, all right, I might not be able to hit my PR in on this most recent race. Maybe I should stay, but take a step back and adjust my plan and look at the longterm health picture. Use this plan to build and continue to to To continue to climb towards a big long term goal, it's like having to take a break and be like, well, we're not getting that dessert tonight because I got to go to the store and get ingredients and I can't actually go tonight because it's too late and the store is closed or you go to the store and they don't even have the ingredient there. This is a training plan that gets totally derailed. Have the flexibility both in the plan and in your mind that you're not guilty over missing anything. And be able to say, it's going to be worth the wait when I do reach these results, when I can put the plan into place and I can start checking off the boxes and I can make this thing work that then the results are really worth it. It's so much nicer than going to the store and being like, well, I'll just buy the cake there because it's going to be good enough. Being able to put in the work yourself with the ingredients that you're choosing that makes the best plan, that's going to be the most rewarding result.

Angie: 45:00

Absolutely. You like the metaphor? I do. And also, learn how to make a one minute mug cake in the microwave because those are delicious and they only take a quote unquote minute, even though they totally take longer than a minute. That was the best thing in this video. One recipe book that we have is like one minute mug cakes. It's like fantastic. It takes 10 or 15 minutes just to gather all the ingredients and prepare the mug cake. And then you have to microwave it for 90 seconds, not 60. And then you have to let it cool for at least five minutes. If you don't want to burn your mouth off. So yes, a one minute mug cake is delicious. They are

Kevin: 45:36

delicious. 20 minutes later, 20

Angie: 45:38

minutes later. Um, but yes, learn how to make a mug cake because they're fantastic. So. If you found this episode helpful, we would love it and appreciate you so much if you went over to Apple Podcasts and left us a rating and a review. It helps more runners find the show and our goal and our mission in this. This whole business is to help more runners to find joy, learn how to train in a way that is right for them so that they can run for decades and take charge of their health. So help us do that by leaving us a review, sharing on social media, tag us in that so we can say thank you. And as always, thank you for spending your time with us. We love you and we appreciate you all for doing that. As always, this has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 347. Now get out there and run your life.